Developer seeking $100M to refi nearly complete Seaport hotel

Just a couple of months until construction wraps at its new South Street Seaport hotel tower, Richard Lou’s LCRE Group is searching for a financing injection of $100 million, sources told The Real Deal.

The developer has been constructing the Marriott-branded AC Hotel New York Downtown at 151 Maiden Lane for more than two years. The desired bridge loan is a five-year floating, non-recourse mortgage with a loan-to-value ratio of 65 percent, or $365 per key, according to marketing materials.

The 33-story hotel broke ground in August 2015 and is expected to be fully constructed by April and then ready for guests in June. Plans called for 274 hotel rooms and 2,000 square feet of ground-floor retail.

LCRE, which has offices on Staten Island and in Chinatown, acquired the site from Fortis Property Group for $32 million, with acquisition and construction financing from Shanghai Commercial Bank, property records show. The firm has so far invested a total of about $48 million into the project and will have roughly $48 million of hard equity remaining in the deal after the refinancing, according to marketing documents.

Newmark Knight Frank’s Dustin Stolly and Jordan Roeschlaub brokered the financing. Lou could not be immediately reached, and the brokers declined to speak.

LCRE primarily buys limited-service hotels in New York City and in Orlando, Florida. The firm sold the Wingate by Wyndham Manhattan at 235 West 35th Street for $37.2 million in 2015, records show.

The hotel project is just north of 161 Maiden Lane, where Fortis is seeking a $185 million condo inventory loan for an 80-unit condominium. A construction also recently died at the site.